A project to bring superfast broadband to homes and businesses across West Yorkshire is ahead of schedule, it has emerged.
Superfast West Yorkshire, part of the government’s £1.08bn Superfast Britain project, celebrated its first year in operation by announcing that more than 21,500 properties across the area can now access high-speed fibre broadband as a direct result of the project.
The figure is 2,000 ahead of target and has been reached more than a month ahead of schedule. More than 220 new fibre street cabinets are in place, with 121 of those live and taking orders from nearby homes and businesses. Engineers have worked thousands of man-hours laying 161km of underground fibre cable.
Superfast West Yorkshire said the network would continue to grow rapidly with the fibre optic technology expected to reach a further 15,000 West Yorkshire premises in more than 31 exchange areas, including Elland, Bretton, and parts of Leeds, Bradford and North Lincolnshire by the end of the year – taking the total to about 36,5000.
Ian Gray, chairman of the Superfast West Yorkshire project board, said: “It’s great to see just how far we have come in one year, which has brought real benefits to our local communities.
“Across the project area, school children can now access the internet as quickly and as easily as they do at school, businesses can work more flexibly or offer their customers perks such as free wifi. At home families can use several devices online at the same time without experiencing a bottleneck in their broadband speeds or set up small businesses from their spare room.”
Superfast West Yorkshire builds on BT’s commercial investment of £2.5bn to roll-out fibre broadband to two-thirds of UK premises.
In West Yorkshire, the programme involves investing a total of £21.96m to extend high-speed fibre broadband to 97% of households and businesses across the majority of West Yorkshire by the end of 2015. The programme also aims to ensure all premises in this area have access to speeds of more than 2Mbps.
